our own statement that the art of match-making
requires cultivation, we did not mean by it to imply that match-making
is not vigorously carried on. So long as there are mothers left with
daughters to be married, so long will match-making continue to be
pursued; and it must obviously be pursued all the more energetically to
keep pace with the growing disinclination of bachelors among the upper
and middle classes to face the responsibilities of married life. We
meant that match-making does not receive the sort of cultivation which
it seems to us fairly to deserve, when we consider the paramount
importance of the object which it at least professes to have in view,
and the delicate nature of the instruments and experiments with which it
is concerned.

We have not yet mustered up courage for the attempt to show what should
be its proper cultivation; but we may safely say that so long as it is
left in the hands of those who are influenced by merely mercenary or
interested motives, and who watch the "attentions" of a bachelor, not in
the spirit of a philosopher or a philanthropist, but in that of a
Belgravian mother, it cannot be cultivated as a fine art. It can only be
rescued from the unmerited odium into which it has fallen by being taken
under the patronage of those who are in a position to practice it on
purely artistic and disinterested grounds. In their hands, the now
perilous process of "paying attention" would be studied and criticized
in a new spirit. It might still, indeed, be treated arithmetically, as
perhaps the most promising way of reducing it to the precision and
certainty of an exact science. But still the problem would be to
determine, not what is the least possible number of dances, calls, or
compliments which may justify the intervention of a big brother or heavy
father, but what number warrants the assumption that the flirtation has
passed out of the frivolous into the serious stage. Three dances, for
instance, may expose a man to being asked what are his "intentions,"
where six dances need not imply that he really has any. The mercenary
match-maker considers only the first point; our ideal match-maker would
lay far more stress upon the second. But still, in any case, this
growing tendency to treat the practice of "paying attention" in the
spirit of exact science offers at least one ray of hope to those who
complain that, do what they will, they cannot escape having to pay this
dangerous tribute. The ten